[Closed] Average Speed on a singlespeed?

It's called singlespeed for a reason. You have to do the same speed up the hills and on the flat. If you're above a certain level of fitness it will make you stronger. If you're below that critical level it will weaken you. You'll end up doing a lot of walking.

You are now ten times the man you were before the weekend.

Revel in your glory.

Harummph! I did 50 miles on a geared bike on Saturday and only averaged 18 KILOMETERS per hour! Mind you, I had lots of practice track-standing just trying to pedal into the wind 😯

My guess is you had some good long, fast downhills on your ride to achieve ave 17mph on an offroad mtb ride 8)

17mph average speed on an MTB ride? That is very quick on any bike. According to the magic Sheldon Brown gear calculator, with that gear you would have to be averaging over 100rpm cadence.

I would see if the British Track team have any spaces left 😯

EDIT - I would be pleased with a 17mph average on the road currently

17 mph average?

That sounds immensely quick for an SS mountain bike ride, unless your idea of mountain biking involves no hills or mountains.

20mph average on a road bike with gears etc. is an ok pace for me for 30miles

I start to spin out on my ss at about 17mph. I think your calculations must be out.

Your bike computer is borked/not setup correctly.

10mph average on a MTB ride is a good rate IMO.

You sure you don't mean 30[b]km[/b] at 17[b]kph[/b]?

17mph is a decent average on a road bike - to average that speed off road you'd probably have a place on the Olympic MTB Squad.

Well thinking about it...........

Uphill, I didnt push once I deliberately avoided hills that were un-singlespeedable (maybe only 3 in the whole ride that reduced me to a pace where crawling would have been more comprortable), so climbing had to be done at ~8mph or not at all.

Allong the flats 10-12mph isn't much bother. Downhill I weigh 95kg on a skinny day, using 160/140mm hope minis there isn't much in the way of slowing down, and a lot of the time I'm pumping for more speed. So getting the average up probably isn't too hard, although the max speed wasn't too high so it must have spent a lot of time at/above the avreage.

Still seems unaturaly high! I'll take the garmin out next weekend to confirm speed/cadence/distance.

You sure you don't mean 30km at 17kph?

Sounds closer the truth - I managed 14.1km/h average over 30Km ish on 32:18 at the weekend - lots of hills, mud and always seemed to be into the wind, maxing out at 50.1km/h - GPS measured, and it always seems spot on. I'm no deadly Ned (though I do have bar ends on my ss) mind. I was inm a hurry to get home too, under a 3 line whip to be back by 09:30.

I haven't hit a 17mph average on my road bike for some time 🙁

LOL,we ave. about 9.6 mph on our night rides(SS),most who come and ride with us recon this is 'quick'

to average 17 mpg on a 30 mile ride,on an mtb of any description,you need to have been going off the edge of a very high cliff.

bit confused tho, 38/18 isn't really a suitable mtb SS ratio,unless of course you just ride round flat fire roads ?

more info please !

Nope, its definately says its in mph, that was my first thought.

You need to get yourself a sponsor thisisnotaspoon

I am lucky to see an avg. like that on my road bike!

😉

he's probably been eating Spanish meat 🙂

Riding arround Swinley, so probably;
25% on road from home to the lookout
25% fire road
25% not very technical single track/flat out
25% technical/twisty singletrack

38/19 because I had a 38t chainring from when I went 1*9 and I bought the sprocket off a guy who was int 29ers.

If true,that immenseley quick.17mph is 27kph!I'm not slow by most standards.On most normal ss mtb rides I average 16-18kph,22-24kph for racing cross (but thats only an hour and at 95% max hr!) and 32-34kph on the road bike.
Go race quick!

a lot of the time I'm pumping for more speed.

Yep, this is a great way to get your average speed up. I do it over crests and into troughs all the time on my road bike, it transformed my TT times.

[url= http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/ ]http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/[/url]

According to this with a 38:19 ratio spinning at 80rpm you'll get 12.3mph.

Do the maths...

Found another GPS'd run from round the woods - hillier than Swinley mind, but it still comes in at 15.4 kph - full rigid though, hurts my arms more than my legs. I wouldn't have wanted to try riding that twice as fast!

You should have raced at the Gorrick (same terrain as your ride). I don't know lap length but I'd guess at between 4 and 4.5 miles. The winner in expert did 5 laps in 95 mins, so go for the longer lap length that's 22.5/95*60 = 14mph.

You'd have been showered and in the burger queue by the time he finished....

Yep, this is a great way to get your average speed up. I do it over crests and into troughs all the time on my road bike, it transformed my TT times.

At Swinley there is a lot of trail that its quicker to pump than it is to pedal.

Right, lights and garmin are on to charge, time to go figure this out.

I used to race at Swinley in the Gorrick Series, done it on both geared HT and geared FS. Even in an Expert level MTB race there is no way on earth the winner was close to that speed - 15mph average was about right for the winner, down to about 13mph average or so for the back end of the field. And that was proper, lungs on fire, legs burning racing.

Your computer is a) buggered or b) set-up wrongly.

Edit: jonv beat me to it by 1 minute, he's calculated pretty much the same average speeds for the Expert field.

The spoon is a hyper-MAMIL 🙂

btw,on the ride that you got those figures,you would of finished in under 2 hours,correct ?

Arround 2 hours 20min, I spent ~20min at the dirt jumps and sessioned one of the corners on tank traps (the left handed berm at the bottom of a dip which you have to get all the braking out the way before the trail drops, but not so much because it comes straight back up the hill before bearing right again, abotu 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through).

Hang on a minute.
Are you sure this is overall average speed for the ride, not just moving speed ?
There can be a big difference, especially if the speedo doesn't record anything under 5mph as moving. 😉

Moving average, or whatever you'd call it, no it doesn't include breaks, hence 17mph average taking 2 and a bit hours to cover 30miles.

Just a note for comparison to the gorrick course, I had a quick mooch about and It looked pretty slow and techy in places, I deliberately stuck to fast flowing trails I knew well.

Just went to look for some fast boys GPS records. This is Matt Page (mtbmatt from here)'s race output for 50Km (30 miles) of Salisbury Winter Challenge. 800m of ascent in total and a shade under 15MPH average and he probably had gears. I'm calling shenanigans on you being anywhere near 17MPH. I doubt you are over 12MPH to be honest.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/61625297

You say you were on a single speed, was it your bmx by any chance?

I'm not suprised fellow MTBers are anti social towards you, at those speeds you'll be long past them before they have a chance to say "hi" or give you a funny look.

17mph for a road SS (48x17ish) sounds right cos according to roadside speedo my commuter cruising speed is 17mph.
XC 17mph, hmmmmmm, got to say I'm sceptical.

Naaa, the BMX is tucked up in the shed for the winter 🙂

Everyones nice and sociable on 26" wheels, I wonder if by extrapolation of that trent 29er riders are all hippies into the concept of free love?

Not only can you ride bloody quickly but I bet if you get out your tape measure you'll discover you have a 12" cock! 🙂

Did you check that you only had 1 magnet on your spokes? 😉

Did you check that you only had 1 magnet on your spokes?

Was my first thought, that the cadence magnet on the crank was spinning past the speed sensor, but no, its miles away.

wireless 'puter ?

I'd go and ride a mile between two 'kmown' points and see what your 'puters registered (or go on a ride with someone with a gps based system) and see what result you get.

You have set right wheel circumference into 'puter haven't you?

Nope wired, I've been through every concievable source of error and come to the conclusion I am in fact superhuman.

BOW DOWN BEFORE ME FOR I AM YOUR GOD*

*other deities may exist, no responsibility is taken by myself (henceforth refered to as GOD) or any of my worshipers or reprisentatives of my church for your eternal damantion or other vengance wrought by other deities as a result of worshiping the wrong diety.

[i]I've been through every concievable source of error and come to the conclusion I am in fact superhuman.[/i]

Proof you must have missed at least one error then 😉

Geared Infidel, my first act as supreme deity is to curse all who have not embraced the one true gear with a batch of those shimano chains that kept snapping and gear hangers so imperceptaby bent you cant straighten it but can't get your gears to index either.

Second magnet on the wheel, that you hadn't noticed?

No disrespect mr spoon but if you can average 17 mph over a good distance on a MTb you should be pro ( and winning a lot of races ). Sound like there's a miscalc somewhere.

'Spoon,you are indeed a god,I bow down and tip my hat etc,etc,and so on....

btw,if you ever fancy a ride around Cannock (no not the donkey) and are down this way.I'll be happy to show you round in exchange for your secret speed

😉

PS,I only ride SS,but don't have a beard atm.....

i've managed 17mph average on my SS - but - it was on a 700c, 70" geared bike with 28mm tyres on a quiet early sunday morning flat route from Enfield into the City of London which is approx 13 miles - i was sweating! 😀

XCKeith1, I was planning on coming up for the Peaks pootle (probably with gears) on the 19th, I've not been to Cannock since the Monkey opened so might well head over that way on the 20th if the weather is nice.

17mph average? Wow.

You forgot to mention that afterwards you killed a lion with your barehands in front of a spaceship full of supermodels...

welcome 'Spoon,my email is in my profile,best not to bring the geared bike tho,people tend to point and larf at them .

PS,if there's any of them Alien supermodels left,can you bring a few ?

You forgot to mention that afterwards you killed a lion with your barehands in front of a spaceship full of supermodels...

Get your facts right, the lion was clearly on the spaceship.

HTTP404 - Member
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/

According to this with a 38:19 ratio spinning at 80rpm you'll get 12.3mph.

Do the maths...

Surely the maths only work for a fixie? If he coasts downhill without turning the cranks...

I take it that it was all downhill or flat?

Are you sure you're not Super Mario masquerading as a SS riding off roader 😆
[img] [/img]

'cos with that pace you'd be impregnating supermodels even quicker than the great one himself, you probably wouldn't even have to touch them 😯

I don't understand why everyone doubts 'spoons mathematics and engineering.
Not Having done even cursory research into this (other than riding a SS for 3years) I can tell this guy is an absolute legend and riding god.

That said; as part of an experiment last year I managed 15mph over a 9mile road lap on my 36:16 26inch wheel inbred, while on slicks. I think we can safely say I'm no bike god.
I'd say 17mph is do-able on a SS, on a fast trail - if you are very fit.

STW truly has a new "King Of Awesome." 🙂

I ride around the edge of Richmond Park on my singlespeed (32:16) 26" MTB on my way home from work each day. Its barely offroad with a couple of steep hills thrown in. 8.3 miles and I average 11.5 mph.

I'm not supremely fit but neither am I slow. To average 17mph around Swinley singletrack would be pretty much impossible IMO.

There's something up with your computer.

On a road loop Dingwall-Ullapool-Ledmore-Bonar Bridge - Struie -Dingwall, 119 miles, average speed on a single speed 48/18 was 13.7mph. There's a few wee hills on the way, but the headwind was the hardest bit. I was just out for a cruise.

Fitter people would be much faster.

Never tried to measure speed on my mtb.

On the road on my MTB SS last weekend, with slicks. 90 miles in 5hr39 and not really pushing too hard. Same trip on a geared road bike my pb is 4hr57. Why isn't a road bike faster?

it is

Ok, after doing some maths turns out the average speed/odometer functions on cateye computers are in km/h despite the speedo being set into mph.......................

I'm not infact a riding messigha, I'm just a very naughty boy 🙁

No, I meant faster than it is, not faster than the SS MTB, which it is. I was expecting a bigger difference.

Spoon, seems a bit peculiar to have speed in mph and distance/average functions in the foreign units. You sure you've pressed the right buttons? I know on Sigma ones it all cahnges when you set one.

Fastest I ever seem to get is ~ 20km/h average (~12.5 mph) on the SS. This is over about 30km averagely tech mix of singletrack trails, road linky bits and canal towpath on the way to work on a nice morning.

turns out the average speed/odometer functions on cateye computers are in km/h despite the speedo being set into mph

[i]I'm not infact a riding messigha[/i]

Still, in your dotage you'll be able to look back fondly at the few hours you were and cherish the warm glow inside that it engendered.

(I'm with Dibbs - you sure the whoel thing just isn't set for km/h?)

No, the speed perfectly matches the reading on the garmin, and 80 rpm is 12.3mph. Even the Max speed is in mph.

But the odometer and average speed are in km, I got suspicious when spinning down the road and the 'average' speed was higher than the 'max' speed!

Cateye strada with cadenece (wired)

I've a sigma in the spares box, so I know how they work with conversion being done when entering the wheel size, the cateye just asks for a wheel size and does it automaticaly for the speed, but not other measurments for some reason.

was gonna say I rode into work this morning round the local trails, Greenham Common, quite similar to Swinley and I averaged 11.1mph. 13.78miles in 1hour:14min - and I'm not exactly slow. Even in the middle of summer in perfect dry conditions I've only managed to average 14.1mph on the same route - and I doubt I could hold that pace for a second loop. What I've found riding SS my is my times are much the same as on a geared bike. It's just a bit harder in some places, but then easier in others.

Kev

miles are for cars. km is for bikes.

"What I've found riding SS my is my times are much the same as on a geared bike. It's just a bit harder in some places, but then easier in others."

See, I was thinking that, and wondered if I'd be even faster fitting a 46t frotn chainring and a 23-11 cassette. 2:1 'singlespeed' gear, with 8 faster ones as well! But without the breaks inbetween 2:1 probably wouldn't get me up any hills.

surely off road having minimal jumps between sprockets is less important than on a road bike - there's so much more to upset your cadence that a 2 or 3 tooth jump isn't a problem?

I run 32:17 or 32:18 on the South Downs around Brighton - seems about right for getting up the hills and I don't seem to spin out on the flat much sooner than I would with a 16 at the back.

My old GT was geared 48/36 23-11 for a while and it was just b'stard hard to pedal and each time I needed to change gear I had to go through two or three shifts for a noticable difference - not really worth it for xc tbh... but it was good on the road with slicky tyres.

[IMG] [/IMG]

My SS was 32:16 when I had it, anymore I wouldn't have been able to get up the muddy slopes and any less would have been even more painfully clown like on the flat sections.

Kev

back in the 90s, i used to use a road cassette (13-23iirc) and it was ok, off road you were down onto the granny ring a bit earlier, but i could get up all the stuff my mates could, no problem.
i remember i did change gear a lot tho.

i'd love to run a nice straight through cassette on my MTB, makes more sense to me, for the trails I use